Monday, 8 May 2017

Teachers
often speak of the importance of imagination as the foundation of creative
activities, but how often do we consider the vital part it plays in wider learning,
life and faith? I want to suggest that imagination is central to life, and is used
by God as he draws us to himself. It is within communities of interest and
practice, that our view of the world, and our place within these multiple
communities, are shaped. As James Smith has argued, as we live with other people, our views, aspirations,
goals, hopes and identities are influenced and changed. Our imaginations are implicated in much of the activities of life.[1]

The Apostle
Paul understood that because of this our imaginations need to be ‘captured’. As the early church emerged
and people from varied backgrounds came together, they brought varied stories
from the past and hopes for their futures. In Ephesians 2 we read how Paul
challenged this new community of believers to grasp that they were no longer
bound by their past, and hence he gave them a vision for their future. He reminded them
that because of Christ we are “… no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow
citizens with God’s and also members of his household” (Eph 2.19). They were to
seek transformed lives within a community where there was no longer Jew nor
Greek, slave nor free. Jew and Gentile alike, needed to be able to imagine a
new future, a new identity and a new world. In his letter to the church in Rome
(Romans 6:11-13), Paul also reminded his readers that they could experience a new unity
and standing before God, not shaped by their past, but by their hoped for future.
This required them to seek and know God and embrace membership of God’s kingdom.
This was not simply a cerebral assent of the mind, it involved them reimagining
their futures.

In their
helpful book, Veith and Ristuccia[2]suggest that imagination expressed within community is an important way that God
transforms us. As we express, test and consider our imaginings with others, we
are transformed and so are they. As our students share their lives, and as they
imagine their futures, they are influenced and changed. Our imagined, as
well as our reasoned discussions of God and his word, rarely do as well in
isolation. Journeys towards faith are generally community projects.[3]God
redeems our imaginations as well as our minds and wills. Like us, our students
flourish in relationship to other people who they not only know, but who they
trust.

The teacher must grapple with the reality that in the mainstream
activities of classroom life, there may well be little that binds members
together; little shared concern, or even common hopes for the future. If our
classroom activities fail to engage the imaginations of our students, they will
exercise these in pursuing other activities, goals, hopes and dreams.[4]

Maurice Friedman suggests that “ … the true teacher is not one who pours
information into student’s head as through a funnel – the old-fashioned
‘disciplined’ approach – or the one who regards all potentialities as already
existing within the student and needing to be pumped up – the newer ‘progressive’
approach. It is the one who fosters genuine mutual contact and mutual trust. “[5]

The key to
reducing the generational distance between teacher and child, and to
establishing classrooms and schools as communities that are transformative and
allow ‘space’ for the ‘imagination’, would seem to be a better means to
developing understanding of one another.

How is this
discussion of dialogue, and relational communities connected to imagination?
Imagination is a foundational part of how such communities are formed.
Imagination is central to how our student minds are engaged, hopes are formed,
aspirations are primed, friendships are conceived and supported. As students
engage in the life of the school, and the communities of practice that they
inhabit, imagination plays a key role in connecting who they are, who they wish
to become, and what is critical to their sense of belonging. The role of the imagination in education, pedagogy and 'life' is a key component within a book - 'Pedagogy and Education for Life' - that I have written and will be published by Wipf & Stock.

I am a professor education exploring learning & pedagogy

I am a Professor of Education at The University of Sydney, Australia. I have spent a large part of my adult life as a teacher, academic, researcher and senior university administrator. My interests are varied, including how children learn language and literacy, the nature and construction of meaning, curriculum, pedagogy, and adult learning.